ERKKI BAHOVSKI ⟩ Peace is usually temporary in nature

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Photo: Ludovic Marin

• Peace, as a rule, has meant preparing for a new war.
• Western Europe may buy the idea of definitive peace.
• Moscow has not considered peace treaties to be anything.

In world history, there have been few definitive peaces, and therefore the Ukraine-Russia peace must also be understood as temporary, according to opinion editor Erkki Bahovski.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented Ukraine's peace plan last week. It is clear that it will not bring peace in the final sense, because neither side intends to lay down weapons, but there is hope that there will be an end to the hostilities for some time. Maybe.

In history, there have been very few peaces – if any – where the warring parties have ceased fighting and peace has truly arrived. Peace in world history has usually meant that one of the warring parties has been completely destroyed or brought to the brink of destruction, so that it no longer poses a real threat to the other warring party. For example, in the Third Punic War (146–149 BC), the Romans completely destroyed Carthage, building an entirely different city in its place. Before that, however, two more Punic wars had been fought. In the history of Europe, peace came in 1945; it meant the complete crushing of Germany and occupation by the Allies. And peace in the Western European sense did not apply in Eastern Europe, where, in principle, the regime established by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact continued.

In history, there have been very few peaces – if any – where the warring parties have ceased fighting and peace has truly arrived.

The Tartu Peace Treaty of 1920 was clearly temporary for Soviet Russia, as we painfully learned. But after World War I too, for example, the German military leadership began to make secret plans for attacking France, and the German-Soviet treaty of Rapallo in 1922 allowed the Germans to start secretly cooperating with the Soviets, thus circumventing the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles.

It is clear that the plan for peace of Zelenskyy and anyone else (except Moscow), and its realization, can only be of a temporary nature. Russia would continue to see Ukraine as a threat to the identity of its statehood and Ukraine would continue to see Russia as a threat to its independence. The Zelenskyy peace plan will not change these aspects.

Stationing Ukrainian military units on the territory of other countries for the purpose of deterring Russia seems like a good idea. Because one can imagine that both Russia and Ukraine will continue to arm themselves after a potential peace – and we are still talking hypothetically here. The arms buildup will also continue in Eastern Europe, including Estonia, which has no illusions about Russia's future intentions. But a weaker link in this combination is Western Europe, where some politicians may indeed be entertaining thoughts of some kind of final peace between Ukraine and Russia. Ukrainian troops, however symbolic, on their territory would be a reminder that peace is only temporary.